Acoustic characterization of additive manufactured perforated panel backed by honeycomb structure with circular and non-circular perforations

Abstract

This paper studies the acoustic properties of an additive manufactured micro-perforated panel backed by a periodic honeycomb structure. Extrusion-based Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) technique of Additive Manufacturing (AM) is used to fabricate the integrated honeycomb structures with a perforated face sheet. Normal absorption coefficient of the fabricated structure is measured in impedance tube using two microphone transfer function method. A generalized analytical formulation based on unit section analysis applicable to various cross sections of perforations has been proposed to predict the absorption coefficient, where shape dependent viscous effects in the perforation are incorporated by deriving effective complex density of the medium. To study the effect of perforation shape, three geometries viz., circular, triangular and square perforations are considered for analysis where triangular shape found to have more absorption coefficient and lower frequency of peak absorption. In addition, broadband absorption coefficient of proposed structure has been demonstrated by deploying hexagonal cells of different lengths in a unit section. The analytical results are compared with experimental results and a good agreement is observed between them. A parametric study is conducted to understand effect of perforated hole size and cell length on the absorption coefficient and peak frequency. Results show that the proposed structures can be tuned to desired frequency range by altering geometric parameters like cell length, shape and size of perforation hole. Technique and methodology presented in the current study gives an alternative way to design and fabricate honeycomb structures with perforations for acoustic applications such as aircraft cabins, ship structures and building acoustics.